Editorial | Mental health challenges in need of champions

Jamaica’s health authorities cannot be accused of being oblivious to the challenges to mental well-being posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, or of failing to respond to its threats. Indeed, the health ministry has, over the past year, rolled out campaigns against the stigma of mental illnesses and provided coping strategies for people facing these issues. Its community support initiative for elderly people suffering from isolation during the pandemic is important.

But a recent survey by the Northern Caribbean University (NCU), whose broad findings were published by this newspaper on Wednesday, suggests that the problem is worse than initially assumed, and that the authorities may need to recalibrate their interventions to what is a major crisis. In this regard, the current focus on the Tokyo Olympics and Jamaica’s performance at those games, as well as the attention mental illness has received in recent times in sports more generally, provide an opening to a more fundamental and accessible conversation on mental health. Jamaica should grasp the opportunity.

According to the NCU report, of 500 people surveyed in mid-June, 86 per cent said they experienced frustrations of some sort, at varying levels of intensity. The pandemic, which not only disrupted social relationships, but precipitated a recession that cost tens of thousands of jobs, exacerbated people’s frustrations – or their emotional responses to the stresses they faced. This frustration may manifest itself in anger or irritability at not being able to achieve goals. Frustration, unaddressed, can be a precursor to other mental health issues.

The triggers for people’s disappointments or disillusionment included financial problems; that they had had to drop out of school; and the limits placed on social interactions by the pandemic. Significantly, young people, those in the 26 to 33 age group, appeared to be more susceptible to these bouts of frustrations, more so than those in the 18 to 25 age group.

COPING MECHANISMS

People’s coping mechanisms ranged from increased use of social media, bonding with friends and family, and finding jobs to supplement their incomes, to seeking solace in religion, drink, tobacco and other substances. Only seven per cent sought counselling. That, the researchers say, is because seeking help from therapists is usually perceived as a sign of weakness. The fundamental message here is of the continued strength of stigma when it comes to mental illness.

While more than six in 10 (62 per cent) of the sufferers said their coping systems worked “somewhat,” much of the outcomes, as the researchers implied, were likely to be temporary masking agents that could possibly lead to deeper problems – those associated with smoking and drinking, for instance. There were, too, as they noted, the risks to vulnerable people from excessive use of social media: depression, anxiety, loneliness, suicidal thoughts and, sometimes, worse.

Christopher Tufton, the health and wellness minister, should direct his technocrats and mental health experts to evaluate the NCU survey to determine its correlation with national data on mental health, as well as what is to be made of the finding that such a massive proportion of the survey’s respondents faced frustrations.

Jamaica, clearly, needs to have fuller, sustained conversations of these matters if mental illness, some form of which affects up to 20 per cent (or more) of the population, is to be brought into the mainstream of the discourse on healthcare – the way that the society is now debating other non-communicable diseases (NCDs), their causes and responses to them. In other words, mental illness ought not to be something to be ashamed of, or hidden. Breaking this cycle of shame needs champions, including successful people with mental challenges, to speak about these issues.

An indication of the stigma associated with mental health was tangentially addressed by Jamaica’s 100 and 200 metres champion at the Tokyo Games, Elaine Thompson-Herah. Mrs Thompson-Herah faced a difficult couple of years after her similar feat at the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. Plagued by injuries, her performances declined.

WRITTEN OFF

After her victory in the 100 metres race in Tokyo this week, Mrs Thompson-Herah recounted to an interviewer how, during the lean times, she was written off by critics, some of whom equated her poor form with her being “crazy”. That criticism was intended as a slur. The underlying suggestion is that Mrs Thompson-Herah was weak, and lacked the mental fortitude to overcome setbacks. It was, as such propositions are often verbalised, a head thing.

Unfortunately, Mrs Thompson-Herah, in her interview did not make the connection between those slurs and the perpetuation of the stigma of mental illness, and the impact this has on many athletes. They suffer in silence, because an athlete talking about his/her mental health challenges is likely to invite ridicule.

There are signs that, globally, there may be openings to a breakthrough. In Tokyo, the decorated American gymnast, Simone Biles, pulled out of her team event and spoke out about the mental challenges she was facing that would make competing dangerous. Before her, Naomi Osaka, the Japanese tennis star, pulled out of the French Open tournament and spoke about the insecurities and anxieties she lived with. Michael Phelps, the great American swimmer, speaks regularly of the depression that confronted him outside the pool.

It is very unlikely that there are no successful Jamaican athletes, or successful people in public life or in the private sector, who face similar mental health issues. We invite some of these people, including athletes and entertainers, to speak out and become the champions that this conversation needs.